Page 106 of Kings & Chaos

Andrei, one of the Knights, had emerged from the water with a limp — he’d hit the surface wrong and fucked up his knee — but other than that and one of the Saints who’d bloodied his hand on one of the rocky outcroppings on the way down, everyone had made it.

“He’s alive,” Rock said. “He’ll be fine.”

I should have been furious. Neo had risked my life by putting me up for the game.

But somehow, all the anger toward him had drained out of my body on the way into the water. And not just my anger for Neo. All the emotions and feelings that had been clouding my mind for the last few months, the past few years, had disappeared.

“You both need to get into a hot shower ASAP,” Oscar said, cutting the engine as the garage door slid down behind us.

We got out of the car, Neo still strangely silent, something like defeat written on his face as we filed up the stairs into the house.

It didn’t make sense. We’d done it. We’d done the cliff jump and gotten the points.

We’d survived.

Oscar disarmed the alarm, and Rock smoothed my still-damp hair and kissed my forehead.

“Want me to run you a bath? Make you some tea?”

I shook my head. “I’m going to stand under the hot shower for an hour, then crank the heat in my room and go to bed.”

“Text if you need anything,” he said.

Neo had already disappeared, probably to shower, and I headed for the stairs, more than ready to do the same. The house was warm, but not as warm as the car had been, especially wrapped in Rock’s arms in the back seat.

I’d started shivering again and knew my body temperature was all over the place. I needed to regulate it, get warm once and for all.

I closed the door to my room, started the shower, and worked to pull off my jeans and sweater. They’d been dry when I put them on after the cliff jump, but the dampness of my body had seeped into the fabric, making them soggy enough to stick to my skin.

It was a relief to have them off, and I thought of Neo, wondered if he was doing the same thing in the room next to mine. I still didn’t understand the expression I’d seen on his face when we’d gotten out of the car, a mixture of defeat and sadness that tugged at my chest in all kinds of uncomfortable ways.

My brain was telling me I shouldn’t give a fuck what Neo was feeling. He’d risked my life.

But he’d saved it too, and I thought of the moment in the water when he’d looked over at me, still holding my hand, his eyes conveying all the things I knew he’d never be able to say.

And I was starting to figure out that my brain didn’t always know what was best for me. It meant well, was trying to keep my heart beating, trying to keep me alive, but its version of alive wasn’t the same as mine anymore.

Alive was jumping from the cliff with Neo’s hand in mine, falling through a winter night, plunging into water so cold it literally tried to steal my breath.

Alive was looking over and seeing Neo looking back, my hand in his, all the dark and unspeakable things we’d never been able to say flowing between us.

I didn’t want to just keep my heart beating, to keep pulling air into my lungs. What was the point of those things if I wasn’t going tolive?

I turned off the water in my shower and left my bathroom, passing through my room and out into the hall. It was still quiet, Oscar and Rock either in their own rooms or still downstairs.

I was glad they weren’t passing through. I wasn’t thinking right now. Didn’t want to think. Didn’t want to explain myself to anyone or view my actions through the lens of anyone else’s perceptions.

This was for me. For Neo.

I let myself into his room without knocking and heard the sound of running water from his bathroom, the door open just a crack.

I pushed it open and entered the steam-filled room.

Neo’s head swiveled to look at me from the huge walk-in shower that was almost identical to mine. The Kings were big men, and the showers had obviously been designed not to be confining for them. It had been weird for me at first to shower without a door, but I’d gotten used to it, and now I was glad there was nothing between me and the sight of Neo’s naked, dripping body.

I’d seen him naked in the shower at Roberto’s house, but everything had moved too fast for me to really take him in. Now he was feet away from me, eyes on fire, exposed in all his glory.

I took my time stripping off my bra and underwear, my eyes on his face, his dark hair dripping water over his sculpted cheekbones, his full lips. His neck was thick and powerful, his shoulders massive even in the supersized shower. Water streamed over the peaks of his chiseled pecs, over the angel tattoo, down his corded abs.

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